Saturday, 18 December 2010

As you are probably well aware, I have been seriously concerned for some time now about the on-going funding of this website and in particular the costs associated with the current web hosting package. These costs have been significant, rising over the years as the site becomes more popular and most of it, until recent times, has come out of my own pocket.

Just recently, I have again had to seek donations to augment my own expenditure and those people that responded have been magnificent in their graciousness. However, during this time I have been trying to find a more permanent answer to this perennial problem as I fully realise this cannot go on. I want a stable platform for this reference resource to ensure that it is there for you everyday for a long, long time to come and sorting out the funding has become a priority.

I am therefore very pleased to inform you that after some serious negotiations an entirely new hosting package agreement has been offered, and accepted, which answers most of the issues that was slowly killing the site.

The first - and major issue - was the ever increasing bandwidth charges; these have now been totally eliminated. Further, the yearly funded hosting package charges have been reduced. I was also extremely concerned that as the site reaches 4Gb in size - ie: very big - that I was going to run out of hosted space. 4Gb was my total limit of affordability. Not now though; now I have a massive 10Gb to play with! That's enough for the site to continue to grow over the next ten years!

So, in short my hosting partners have really played their part and have provided a package that I can work with for some time to come.

Mind you, there still remains an on-going financial commitment for me to achieve each year; the new hosting package is still renewable each year on the same date and still has to be afforded and paid for. And that commitment still falls on my shoulders. However, what it does mean is that for the first time since I started this site some 10 years ago the costs are now fixed - and targetable - as opposed to never knowing what the bill will be, except huge. The overall running costs have been drastically reduced and I for one am very grateful.

Will the site need donations(?); the answer will still have to be a massive 'Yes'.

It will always remain very helpful when any donation is made as each one received reduces my personal financial outlay towards the costs of running this site and there are more costs and fee's other than just the hosting package, although that is the largest one by far. Also, they go a long way to funding the costs of modernising the site as programmes used to construct it become inoperable due to pc and server up-dates.

But what all the above has done is to make the reaching of those committed financial totals much easier for me to achieve and that is a great relief.

However, whilst I have made every effort to see that this site remains active and alive, the simple statement below will always be true:-